Hey, it's Latif from Radio Lab.

Our goal with each episode is to make you think,

how did I live this long and not know that?

Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.

Listen, wherever you get podcasts.

Hey, it's Rend.

Before we get started, we want to give you a heads up

that this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and racism.

This is America in Pursuit, a limited-run series from ThruLine and NPR.

Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States of America.

That began 250 years ago this year.

And today we're bringing you the story of how those words, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,

weren't exactly intended for everybody.

The United States was born as one of the most in egalitarian societies in the world.

The Constitution was written by and for a very specific set of people, landowning white

men.

Everybody else, women, Native Americans already living in what would become the United States,

and Black Americans, whether free or enslaved,

were not a part of that vision. And even though founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson,

who, let's be real, owned enslaved black people himself, fought to eliminate slavery in the

Constitution, they failed. Slavery was just too divisive and too lucrative, a foundation

of the colonial economy. And according to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of African-American

...